#STRask - Why Think the Evidence for the Resurrection Is Strong if Saul Wasn’t Convinced by It?

Episode Date: September 9, 2024

Questions about why anyone should think the evidence for the resurrection is strong if Saul and the majority of first-century Jews found it insufficient, why Jesus came to to the Jews rather than another nationality, and how other nationalities came about through Noah.   Why should educated non-Christians today trust apologists’ claims that the evidence for the resurrection is strong if Saul and the overwhelming majority of first-century Jews found it insufficient? Why did Jesus come specifically to the Jews rather than to a Chinese family or African or any other nationality, and how did those other nationalities come about through Noah?

This is Stand to Reasons, hashtag STR Ask podcast with Amy Hall and Greg Kokel, and we welcome you. And Greg? Amy? Are you ready for your questions? Yes, ma'am. Greg? Amy? Are you ready for your questions? Yes, ma'am.

Okay. This first question comes from Gary. Why wasn't Saul impressed with the evidence? Apologists claim the evidence for the resurrection is very strong, yet Saul had access to all the evidence and all the eyewitnesses for three years. He wasn't convinced until he had a, quote, heavenly vision. Why should educated non-Christians today trust apologist claims that the evidence is strong if Saul and the overwhelming majority of first century Jews found it insufficient? Well, it's not clear to me that the overwhelming majority of first century Jews were giving it

an even-handed assessment, first of all. Okay, according to the record, Jesus was crucified because the Jewish leadership whipped the crowd into a frenzy before Pilate to ask for Barabbas rather than Jesus. And that's just one example. And the text says that Pilate understood it was through envy. But we have a lot of other examples that are mentioned in the text that anybody who would show favor to Jesus would be thrown out of the synagogue. Okay? And Nicodemus in John chapter 3, one of the most respected leaders of that group, came to Jesus by night to have a conversation with him and acknowledged. He said, nobody could do the works that you do unless God had done them. of peer pressure, especially when the peer pressure is a bullying pressure that is in a position to place a penalty on those who don't agree with what they want to agree with. Okay, so all of that makes it—it disincentivizes people for looking at the details, okay, closely. Secondly, Saul's not the biggest mystery. The biggest mystery is the Jewish leadership who knew that Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead.

I just put a note down. That's the resurrection of Lazarus, the raising of Lazarus is in John 11, but in John 12, it talks about they were plotting to kill Jesus because he had worked such a notable miracle, a lot of people were following him now based on the miracle. This is even before the resurrection, the resurrection of Jesus. And then it says, and they also plotted to kill Lazarus, because Lazarus is the living, breathing evidence that Jesus raised him from the dead. Now, this is like a no-duh, right? Really? Are you kidding me? But this is what I call unbelievable unbelief.

And so it tells us, and this is true even now, even with the preponderance of evidence, people have motivations for not accepting what's obvious, all right? And so there's a psychological element here that is not being acknowledged by the challenger, the questioner here, Gary. And I don't know if Gary is the one who's asking the question for himself or he's offered it, but this is the kind of question an atheist would ask. Well, if the evidence is really that good, why didn't Saul believe? The answer is, I can't get into Saul's head. I don't know why Saul didn't believe what was obvious, if in fact he had the evidence of all of the same kind of evidence that everybody else had. Remember, he was told that the Jews stole the body, that the disciples stole the body,

you know, and that was probably good enough for him. That was the rumor that was, or the explanation that the Jewish leadership put out. I don't know what was in his head. The question isn't what was in Saul's head, if the evidence is so good. The question is, is the evidence any good? And when you have an empty tomb, when you have the sightings, when you have the conversions, when you have the origin of the early church, for example, when you have clearly Jesus was executed on that Roman cross, and you have these things that are not disputed,

the question is what best explains all of that, all of those data points. all of that, all of those data points. And there is no explanation that is offered that collectively explains everything except the explanation of the apostles, he was dead, is now alive. Okay? Now, if the evidence is so good, why wasn't Paul convinced until later. It is interesting. He was convinced against his will, as it were. That itself is a data point. But why wasn't he convinced beforehand? I don't know. It doesn't matter. You have all kinds of things that people believe that there's plenty of good evidence for that counters their belief. There's still some flat earthers. There are geocentrists around. So my point is this, to the naysayers, to the heliocentrists,

to the people who actually think the earth is a globe, if the evidence were so good, then why aren't these people believing? Do you see what a nonsense question that is? It takes you nowhere. It takes you nowhere. What you have to do is look at the evidence, not at whether or not people believe, and ask whether the evidence is compelling. If you don't think it's compelling, then don't believe. But you can't disqualify the evidence because somebody else didn't believe.

qualify the evidence because somebody else didn't believe. You don't know their psychological circumstances, but we do know from the record a lot of the social pressures that were around it. By the way, even though the majority of the Jews didn't believe, all of the early church, almost entirely up until mid-first century, were Jewish, including skeptics like James and hostile persecutors of Christians like Saul of Tarsus. So, I mean, I don't understand. I guess I don't understand why someone would think that this point, based on the question, is somehow compelling to them. And I think a good question is, why would the church grow at all in Jerusalem, where people had the ability to see the evidence? Why would it grow at all?

And it did grow very quickly if the evidence was bad. That's another question you can ask. Listen, there were lots of individuals in the first century that claimed to be the Messiah. And just before that. You can go and look at the record if people are interested in that. There were lots of people that rose up. Even Gamaliel made a statement about that. You know, when he said, let this go.

If it's not of God, it'll die a natural death, which all the other ones did. What is it different about this particular one? And even somebody like Bart Ehrman acknowledges that the testimony of the resurrection of Jesus goes back very, very early. This is not invented. I mean, even in the book of Romans, chapter 1, first couple verses, declared with power to be the Son of God through the resurrection. So, there you got what is Romans, like mid-50s? You've got, within 20 years, you've got a declaration of Jesus as the Son of God based on the declaration that he rose from the dead. based on the declaration that he rose from the dead.

So this is not a later addition in the record that as time goes on, people are just adding stuff to it. I mean, there's a whole bunch of reasons why this doesn't make sense. But nevertheless, this is just a poor line of reasoning. Now, that doesn't make our view true, but it makes this kind of objection silly. Well, and I think the Lazarus point is so important because here they're saying, he raised him from the dead, so now we must kill him so people don't follow Jesus. So just knowing that a miracle happened didn't change their hearts towards Jesus. And you talked about psychological and social reasons. There's also spiritual reasons. You know,

people, they don't want to admit that they have sins. They want to be self-righteous. There's all sorts of reasons that the Pharisees, they wanted power. They had all sorts of reasons to not follow Jesus. You know, Paul's the same. He said he had everything. He had arrived. He was a Jew of Jews, and he was a Pharisee, and he had all of these advantages in society. So there are all sorts of reasons why people wouldn't want to follow, even if they think it's true. They can offer a different explanation for it, like the Pharisees did. For example, when he drove out demons, they claimed it was because he did it through Satan. So you can even interpret the evidence you're seeing in a different way if you're against that person. To which, by the way, Jesus had a great rejoinder.

A house divided against itself cannot stand. I mean, obviously, this worked its way into the vernacular of the English language. It's so well known. Now, somebody might say, well, you're just trusting that the Gospels say this about Jesus and Lazarus and the Jews and everything. Yeah, well, that's the same text that you're relying on to say that Saul of Tarsus wasn't convinced until he had allegedly seen Jesus. Well, you can't have it both ways. You can't seize upon a text as historical to make your argument, and then when the counter is offered from the same historical text, dismiss the historical text.

This happens all the time, though. All the time people do this kind of thing. So I have one little story to illustrate this, because I've encountered this myself. I used to have Mormon missionaries coming to visit me every week, and we would talk about things, and they switched them out. So I talked to a bunch of different ones. And one time, they're always moving around, so I don't think that was because of me. But so one of them, I asked him, I said, if I were to convince you for sure that the Mormon church was not true, would you follow the truth or would you follow the church? And he sat there for a second and thought about it, and he said, I'd go with the church. And that just shows you the power of the social pressure.

Your family, your friends, everyone has these expectations of you. You don't want to lose your standing in the community. There are a lot of reasons. We see that throughout the New Testament. You see people walking away from Jesus for those very reasons. So it happens. It happens. And he was very open about what he valued more than the truth. By the way, that's a question that Frank Turek, when he visits the various universities,

I was with him last week for CIA, and this week he's at two different universities, you know, making his case. But he asked this question a lot as people are pressing him. He said, if I could persuade you that Jesus was who he claimed to be, would you follow him? No. Okay. Well, what's the point of asking? I always like to ask that question because I think it gets to the heart of the problem, and that is they don't like the biblical God. They just, they wouldn't follow him even if they thought he was real. So the problem isn't the lack of evidence. The problem is who do they think God is and why do they hate him? So yeah, that's a great question to ask. Here's a question from Lauren. My husband, who is a new Christian, asked, why didn't Jesus come to a Chinese family or African or any other nationality? Why specifically the Jews, and how did those other nationalities arrive through a white Jewish survivor called Noah? Were any of the survivors black or Chinese or as distinguishable as they are today? or as distinguishable as they are today?

Well, this is a fair question, but it's an odd one, okay? We do not know what color Noah was. There's no indication anywhere that that's the case. And he wasn't Jewish because there were no Jews then. There were no Jews then, right? Now, the question of where all of these different races come from, and I know there's controversy about whether there is such a thing as race, but people who say there is no such thing as race use the concept all the time, it seems like. If there's no such thing as race, you can't be a racist, for example. But in any event, there does seem to be groupings of people, and a lot of this has to do with isolation in geographic areas. And by reproduction, certain genetic traits become predominant.

And so that whole—over time, that whole group of people take on a very particular way of looking, of physical appearance. And if you think about in Genesis 11, you have the people being confused with the different languages. This isolates people in different groups already. So you can talk to geneticists about that, but I don't think there's any mystery about that. By the way, this is the case even if you – without God, even with original – you know, whoever the original humans were, they were one thing. And then you have over time through genetic pooling and stuff like that, you have these variations.

So this is a question that either side could ask, all right? So it isn't like you had, you know, Swedes all, you know, developing through evolutionary process on their own, and then you have a whole other group of people developing through the evolutionary process completely separate. No, there was a core group that ended up moving out, and then they developed these distinctive characteristics. That's not an issue for—I don't see why that's an issue. Here's the other thing that's interesting. Let's just say that—and by the way, there's a theological answer to that. I'll get to that in a moment.

But let's just say that Jesus was born of a Chinese family. that—and by the way, there's a theological answer to that. I'll get to that in a moment. But let's just say that Jesus was born of a Chinese family. Wouldn't the same question apply there? Why was he born of a Chinese family and not of a Jewish family or a black family or, you know, a Swedish family? Well, because he's got to be born somewhere. If God's going to send a Messiah, he's got to be born somewhere with some group of people. And so you're not going to be able to avoid that fact. The question doesn't help at all. Now, there is a specific answer why he was born to the Jewish race. It's because the Jewish race was started by God for the purpose of bringing the Messiah into the world. And by the way, it wasn't just, okay, here's a bunch of Jewish people, have a baby, he'll be the Messiah. That's, you know, like 4 BC

when that happened. There's thousands of years, at least 2,000 years, actually more, of recorded history of God speaking to prepare and develop the circumstances on which the nation of Israel would be the mouthpiece through which this rescuer would be proclaimed because it came from their race. And this is where, if you want to read, well, you can look at the story of reality, but it doesn't go into much detail in this point. This is where the Bible fast-forward the eight-session series, 50 minutes each, with a 150-page workbook that comes with it, syllabus, is going to help, and people will see. There's a whole process that's involved for God preparing the mouthpiece, the people, and all kinds of details for the arrival of the Messiah who would rescue

the world, a blessing to all nations according to Genesis 12 and the first three verses. That's the promise to Abraham. The ultimate goal of the Abrahamic covenant is to rescue the world. So, there is a theological reason why it came through the Jews. God purposed to set aside one person and build from that Abraham, from that one person, a great nation through whom he would reach the world. That's God's purpose. And, of course, from that nation came the Messiah, who would be the one who saves the world, but the mouthpiece were the Jews, and they were supposed to be. Ironically, even Dennis Prager, the Jewish talk show host, intellectual, not a Christian,

though he's very Christian-friendly, obviously, says the same thing. This was the Jew's job to bring—well, he would characterize it as ethical monotheism to the world, but the point is God commissioned the Jews to accomplish the spiritual salvation of the world. Even on his way of thinking about it, his understanding of spiritual salvation of the world is a little different. But notice we agree on the same thing. He understands God commissions the Jews for that purpose. This is God's great rescue plan for the world. Yeah, I think the mistake is, especially for a new Christian who may not understand what

the Bible's about, they might think Jesus just plopped into the middle of this story that had nothing to do with him, but it's all about, it's all leading up to him. And God chose Abraham, and he talks a lot about how he didn't choose the Jews because they were greater than everyone and more numerous and better and all that. He chose them because he wanted to reveal his glory, his power, his grace. And so he chose one person. And out of one person, Abraham, who, like I said, was after Noah. Noah comes before Abraham. He builds up this entire culture. He gives them the law. He gives them the promises.

He gives them the temple. He creates this whole culture where they understand the need for holiness and the need for a sacrifice in order to be holy so that they can be with God. They come to understand sin and what sin is and what things are sin. And this takes so much time. He's building up an entire culture so that when Jesus came, they would recognize him and he would make sense, not just as something out of the blue, recognize him. And he would make sense, not just as something out of the blue, but something that was actually the result of all of the things he had set up over the last, you know, 1,500 years or 2,000 years since Abraham. Just take a moment and read the birth narratives. So that would be in Matthew, and that would be in Luke. And then look at the particular things, especially in Luke. Look at the particular

things. Well, Matthew starts out with the genealogy. It goes all the way back, you know, to David, I think. I think Luke and genealogy might go back to Adam. But nevertheless, it's like, why the genealogy is in either case? Because there was a promise about a Savior that would come from the line of David. And in both genealogies, we see the line going back in two different directions back to David through two different sons. And it converges Mary and Joseph are on two different lines from David. it. And so that in itself, but you look at the birth narratives and you'll see everything that's being said by the angel to Gabriel, to Zacharias by the angel regarding John the Baptist, the things that are said when they bring Jesus to the temple to be circumcised, and dedicated, all of the things that the different people are saying,

the particulars of what they're saying are tying back into the thread that goes all the way back to Abraham and continues on. They're making reference. They're tying it all to the past. Yes, this is the one, the Savior, promised to our fathers, right? And the promise of Abraham and the Savior, it's all in there. Just read them and just isolate. You can isolate what are the claims being made by all these people that pertain to the history leading up to the coming of Jesus. And you will see the appeal to the continuity of history that has this culmination in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. And of course, we're talking about Abraham because he's asking about the Jews specifically, but of course this goes back to Adam and Eve, because God promised way back in the garden

that there would be a Messiah. And the snake would, how does it go? He will bruise his heel. He will be bruised on his heel, yes, but he would strike the snake on his head. So the promise goes all the way back to then, but then, of course, the Jews start with Abraham. So that's why we're focusing on that here. But, of course, the whole story of the Bible is all connected. It's all one story. So hopefully, Lauren, you can help your husband to understand that, get a better idea of what the Bible is about and the story of Jesus, and hopefully that will help him. And this is a completely legitimate question for him to ask, all right?

So we might suggest start with the story of reality. That will give you the big picture. Your book. The book, Story of Reality. Just in case she doesn't know. Yeah. I'm sorry. My book.

The book. Just in case she doesn't know. Oh, I'm sorry. My book. And then consider going to our store and getting the Bible Fast Forward series. I think it's digital now. Maybe it's DVD. I don't know how it's – You can get audio. You can get a video. The video is the most fun. Yeah, because don't you have a hand? Yeah, there's all kinds of stuff going on there. And I mean, then you can watch it together and

stop it and talk about it. In the workbook, you print out the PDF. And all the outline is there of the whole series. So it's a... Anyway. Yeah, so that's at our website at str.org. And you can also go to our website to send us a question. And I think Gary's question was a little long, I admit it. But we actually prefer you have maybe a two-sentence question. It should be short. It should be the size of a tweet. our hashtag SDR Ask page. You can find a link there and just go there and send us your question. We'd love to hear from you. Thank you for listening. This is Amy Hall and Greg Kokel for Stand to Reason.